Half of Russian migrant children are not attending school

There are 638,174 minors in Russia whose parents are foreign citizens, and half of them are not attending school. This was announced on June 10 by Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Igor Zubov in response to a question from deputies of the Russian State Duma.

“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that most of them are not studying. But probably, half of them are idle for some reason,” Zubov said.

He also noted that the number of such children is decreasing. According to Zubov, there are 80,282 minors of foreign origin living in Moscow, of whom only 25,000 are receiving an education.

It was reported that on June 10, deputies of the State Duma adopted a bill in the first reading. According to the draft law, regional and local education departments will be required to provide information about migrant children to the relevant departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The information to be shared includes:

• Results of Russian language proficiency tests;
• Details of admission to or expulsion from educational institutions;
• Records of school applications from parents are listed in the registry of persons under supervision.

It is worth noting that since April of this year, migrant children in Russia have been required to take a Russian language test before being admitted to school. The test includes both oral and written components. For first-grade applicants, only the oral part is administered. Children who fail the test are not permitted to attend school, and re-examination is only allowed after three months.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin stated that the language test produced immediate results: within two months, only 4% of applicants were accepted into schools. As of May 22, a total of 2,868 applications had been submitted for testing, but only 17 percent—or 498 children—were allowed to take the exam.